Scorpions in a Bottle: 'For Want of a Nail' Expanded

[SpanishSpy]

OOC: Comments? Anyone?


The Early Worden Governorship

Theodore Worden, as detailed previously, was an ardent CNA nationalist, had had quite inflammatory opinions against those he saw as detrimental to the betterment of the nation as a whole. Catapulted into the Governor-Generalship after the attacks of August 2nd, he would ensure that those who impeded upon the CNA would pay the full price for their actions.

The Indian Liberation Movement was determined quickly determined to be the sponsor of the attacks, as announced by Shamba Pandya in a radio broadcast:

"We are, and proudly are, the men who sponsored this assault on tyranny. The men in Burgoyne are just like the men in London and Taichung: sponsors of imperialism, and by extension of the forces that keep India, our homeland, in chains. Now, listen to their nation writher and scream; they are now paralyzed."

This rhetoric by the ILM sent the majority population in the CNA into a blinding rage directed against anything Indian. Indian immigrant-owned businesses were picketed (and in some cases violently attacked), and Indian immigrants were often attacked publicly in major cities such as Norfolk, Burgoyne, and New York. These attacks were, to the chagrin of people inclined towards the Peace and Justice Party, often encouraged by the crowds of angry North Americans seeking vengeance. Notably, Worden and the remnants of the Grand Council said nothing on the matter.

To begin intensifying security in the country, Worden announced on August 18th that the CNA would be undergoing the first draft of all able-bodied males into the military to "restore peace, order, and a sense of normalcy in the Confederation and goodwill to all peoples." Immediately, the Peace and Justice Party began massive protests on university campuses (the Party's strongholds), but other than them, very few objected. The nation was in turmoil, most agreed, and drastic measures would have to be implemented to counter the threat of another attack of this nature.

The most shocking event of this persuasion was a massive student protest at the University of Indiana in Michigan City on August 21st, in which several thousand students and likeminded individuals who had refused to register for the draft demonstrated for an end to the increasing militarization of CNA society (Worden had called several units into active alert, and the occasional military patrol was not uncommon). Here, the head of the Peace and Justice Party James Volk was speaking to denounce the Worden Governorship's "Cronyism, enabling of oligarchy, and militarization."

However, at this protest, the general in charge of the CNA military base in Michigan City by the name of Ernest O'Donnell, a devout Imperativist, felt it necessary to station troops by the site of the protest "in the name of protecting them from those who may commit violence against them." This was not without a grounding in reality; the PJP had been subject to violence as well as Indian immigrants. As such, several warmobiles and infantry squads were positioned in key areas. They were under strict orders to not fire first at any threat.

Tragedy struck when a particularly incensed group of students, about ten in number, attacked an infantry unit stationed in the area of the protests using privately owned firearms. The infantry, seeing as they had been attacked first, fired back, killing all the students in that group. As word spread, more overzealous students began attacking military forces, and eventually an entire riot had broken out among a portion of the protestors. This was not backed by the PJP leadership, however. Volk is on the record as calling to those committing violence to stop, saying "There is a reason why we are called the Peace and Justice Party! Stop this violence at once!"

Even so, Volk was arrested by local police forces for inciting violence amongst the students, something he fervently denied. The "Bloody 21st," as it became called, resulted in 224 student deaths (not all of them attackers) and 21 deaths of active duty soldiers. O'Donnell was unrepentant:

"I refuse to apologize for the actions taken in self-defense by my soldiers. I am certain any other commander in the area would have authorized it."

Worden, in an announcement in newspapers and on official vitavision channels, applauded O'Donnell and the arrest of Volk. To counter this, he would be appointing O'Donnell as the new head of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, replacing Orton MacPherson, who had tendencies towards the Liberal Party. As the new head of the CBI, O'Donnell would be in charge of investigating subversive elements and other potential terrorists.

On September 4th, Worden addressed a meeting of the members of the United British Empire in London regarding the Indian Liberation Movement, giving the now-infamous "vengeance speech," a speech which would define CNA foreign policy for the next several years:

"Fellow members of the British Empire, I know of your deliberations regarding requesting military aid from the Confederation of North America to combat the threat of the Indian Liberation Movement and its madman of a leader, Shamba Pandya, who has menaced your nations before and has menaced our nation last month. To this request, we accept. We will aid you. It is in the best interests of all. The CNA armed forces will be at your disposal."

On September 8th, the first CNA forces, under command of Jared Ethan, landed in Pondicherry, beginning the Occupation of India.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Beginnings of the Invasion of India

On September 8th, 1973, the first divisions of the CNA military arrived in Pondicherry to, in the words of Governor-General Theodore Worden, "restore peace to a blighted land and bring to justice a butcher who has slaughtered thousands if not millions." Pondicherry, an area with little action taken by the Indian Liberation Movement, was chosen for that very reason to be the location of the United Empire Task Force Headquarters (UETFH), the base of operations for United Empire forces in India.

Soon after the arrival of CNA forces, several divisions from the UK, Victoria, Australia, and New Zealand arrived in Pondicherry as part of the Empire-wide alliance to find and put Shamba Pandya on trial for crimes against the Dominion of India and the United Empire as a whole. Even though Britain was the head of the Empire at least nominally, the entire operation was under the command of the CNA military, assisted by the Confederation Bureau of Investigation.

The commander of this offensive was General Jared Ethan, a CNA military man from Scottsdale, Indiana, and a devout Imperativist. In the wake of the August 2nd bombing, Governor-General Worden made Ethan the head of the Army Task Force for National Security, tasked with overseeing the military operations with keeping the peace in the CNA post-bombing. Now, due as much to his loyalty to the Imperativist cause as to his skill, he was in command of a multinational coalition designed to take revenge on those who attacked his home country.

The arrival of the Empire force in India was met with mixed reactions among the population of India. The Empire Party rejoiced, encouraging young Indians to join the Indian Army to aid the coalition in putting an end to the violence that had plagued the country. The Liberal Unionist Party issued statements of support for the coalition, but made no urges to join the Indian military. The Indian Congress for Independence was officially neutral, but many high-ranking members made statements supporting their mission if not their overall purpose of keeping the empire together.

Upon the arrival of the coalition force, Shamba Pandya released a radio broadcast calling for a new insurgency against the Empire and the Indian government in Delhi. In this broadcast, he said:

"Indians, the imperialists now have no qualms about destroying our way of life, our traditions, our people, and our nation. It is now time to make fertile India's land with the blood of the conquerors. Kill all imperialists you can; men, women, children, soldiers, workers, White or Indian or Negro; it is irrelevant. Make them suffer for coming here."

To inaugurate this threat, locomobiles rigged with explosives, dubbed 'locobombs' by English-speaking observers, detonated in several Indian cities in crowds of people, killing 1,500 on that date alone. Shootings, bombings, and other acts of terrorism were commonplace in the following weeks, not least in areas with Coalition presence.

From Pondicherry, CNA forces moved north to reinforce Delhi, Karachi, Bombay, and Calcutta. The first engagement between CNA forces and the ILM ensued on the outskirts of Pondicherry when a convoy freightmobile, ostensibly belonging to the Indian government, was actually filled with ILM resistance fighters who burst out of the freightmobile and slaughtered several civilian workers before CNA troops engaged them. Eventually, some were captured and brought to a compound in Pondicherry for interrogation, but the vast majority were killed. Ten CNA soldiers and twenty-five ILM fighters were killed.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Foundation of the Global Association for Peace

In the wake of the August 2nd attacks on Burgoyne, John Paul Lassiter, his staff, and his cabinet, as well as the entire Mexican government looked upon the situation with unease. Lassiter had previously made several direct overtures towards the Indian Liberation Movement, but the murder of the majority of the CNA Grand Council during the August 2nd attacks seriously gave his administration pause.

On August 4th, the Mexican Congress voted to issue no statement regarding the attacks, and offer no humanitarian aid, unlike several other nations of the world which did. Through various diplomatic channels, he ensured the other nations of the Greater American Free Trade Agreement did not do so either. This position was urged on by Secretary of War Ernesto Salmeron and Secretary of State Raymond Portillo, both stern Mercatorists that opposed the CNA and what it stood for, much like Lassiter. Opposed to this policy of neutrality was General Julio Recinos, the commander of the Jefferson military district and the main overseer of border troops between the USM and the CNA. Backing him was General Malcolm Norris, commander of the border troops in Alaska and the northern parts of Arizona and Mexico del Norte. Generals Recinos and Norris opposed the lack of compassion of the regime on the basis that it may make the CNA more likely to strike the USM first.

When the CNA and the United British Empire jointly invaded India, Lassiter made a firm denunciation of the invasion, calling it "an imperialist action designed to keep yet another people in the hands of the British." Similar statements were made by Rigoberto Rodriguez of the Argentine, Enrique Hermion of New Granada, and other nations of GAFTA, as well as various African and Asian nations that opposed the intervention.

Lassiter realized that the United British Empire provided a framework for powers hostile to the United States of Mexico to coordinate their efforts to attain strategic policy objectives, most of which Lassiter took as hostile, the invasion of India highest among them. To counter this, Lassiter called for an assembly of delegates to form a new organization to provide a framework for the coordination of the activities of poorer nations of the world.

In a speech in Mexico City's Jackson Square:

"The oppressed peoples of the world need a safeguard for their independence, such that their enemies in Burgoyne and London may not encroach upon them. So now, I call for a conference of peoples in a neutral area to hammer out a new organization, the Global Association for Peace, to act as such."

Almost immediately, the poorer nations of the world sent ambassadors to Mexico City to voice approval of this plan. A brief meeting in Mexico City led to the agreement that it should be held in a neutral area, not in Mexico. Eventually the decision was reached that the Association's Charter Conference would be held in Port Babineaux, United Townships of Ghana. President of the United Townships Jacques Desrochers was ecstatic, hoping for an increased amount of trade in his poor, impoverished nation.

On September 20th, 1973, the Port Babineaux Conference was completed, with 95 nations, the United States of Mexico among them, being signatories to the Global Association for Peace Charter. Under the Charter, there would be a Director-General serving as the chief executive of the organization, tasked with various administrative functions. The first Director-General was Kulap Sunan Metharom, a delegate from the Kingdom of Siam. In his inaugural speech, Metharom denounced the "imperialists in Taichung that oppress my homeland and the lands of East and Southeast Asia."

In addition to the executive Director-General, there would be a World Assembly composed of two delegates per nation, tasked with passing resolutions regarding the world situation, hoping that the nations of the Association would agree with its assessment. Shortly after the passing of the charter, the first meeting of the World Assembly took place in the National Legislature building in Port Babineaux, with a GAP building scheduled to be completed by the end of 1973. Additional buildings would be constructed in other parts of Port Babineaux, as well as auxiliary offices in Mexico City.

 

[Petike]

Do continue. Some interesting ideas here.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Kramer Associates in the 1970s

After the launch of the Bernard Kramer from Honshu, Japan, Kramer Associates established itself as the leading power in space exploration, and its actions in other parts of the world solidified itself as a major power on the level of the United British Empire, Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico, or any other power so endowed. As benefitting a power of said stature, company President Carl Salazar authorized a series of exploits worldwide for the creation of profit and goodwill.

Salazar, a personal friend of Japanese Prime Minister Shotaro Ogino, put relations with that country among the highest priorities among KA objectives. It was KA that helped Japan modernize during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there was a feeling of a great debt owed to KA by many in Japan. In the words of the Emperor himself in 1962:

"Kramer Associates is a blessing from the Queen Goddess Amaterasu herself. They have helped us reach a pinnacle of development, and we owe them a great debt."

Under Salazar, the relationship with the United British Empire grew and grew, and Salazar himself met with politicians from Britain, India, Australia, and Victoria to mend their relationship, even though Salazar was the one who authorized the Taichung project which spurred development of nuclear weapons in the UBE. Said alliance was mostly an alliance of convenience; it was their mutual distrust of the United States of Mexico that brought them together. It was known during the Global War that Mexico was capable of harming British holdings in the Pacific, and the UBE was not interested in having that occur a second time.

Salazar remained hostile towards the United States of Mexico, and the acquisition of that nation of atomic bombs under the direction of Thomas McCarthy worried him greatly. He ordered KA naval bases on Luzon and Mindanao to mobilize in case of a Mexican strike, and primed all nuclear launch sites in case of Mexican hostility. However, beyond rhetoric, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter displayed no interest in actively antagonizing the corporation; rather, his main enemy was the CNA. Salazar was satisfied with this arrangement.

Salazar was ambivalent towards the CNA, and mostly did not concern himself with the country's politics. He took an interest in the Imperativist movement, however, and covertly funded some of their candidates; he figured that so long as the CNA was openly hostile to the USM, KA could be left to its own devices. After the August 2nd bombings and the deaths of most of the CNA Grand Council, Salazar authorized a massive aid package to be sent to Burgoyne to be used in reconstruction.

Kramer Associates owned several manufacturing plants in India which were responsible for the production of weapons and foodstuffs to be sold worldwide. The Indian Liberation Movement found KA's involvement in the country deeply disturbing, and several of these manufacturing plants were damaged or destroyed in bombings. After the joint CNA-UBE invasion force landed in Pondicherry, KA threw his support behind the Coalition. KA diplomatic channels in Burgoyne, London, Rutledge, Canberra, and Delhi all offered financial and supply aid in the occupation, which was accepted by all. CNA Governor-General Theodore Worden had the following to say on the matter:

"Mr. Salazar has yet again shown his dedication to keeping world peace. We graciously accept any aid he has to offer us, and wish him the best in his endeavors."

To international observers, the most morally dubious actions committed by Salazar during the 1970s were a continuation of his policies started in the wake of the Global War: policy in China and Southeast Asia. These areas had fractured into warlords' provinces, and KA was eager to remain with an economic foothold in these regions. By 1971, there were fewer of these states, some backed by and friendly towards KA and others hostile to them.

In China, the Republic of Jiangsu, in control of a majority of Southeastern China with its capital at Nanjing, was the major KA-backed state, run by President Wen Pan. Wen was a Chinese commander during the Global War who fought against the Mexicans and Siberians that had invaded. After the fragmentation of the Chinese government, Wen returned to his native Jiangsu and carved out a fiefdom for himself. Wen was, unlike most warlords, eager to have KA investment in Jiangsu and its territories, and established an embassy in Taipei in 1967. From there, he cooperated with Salazar and his agents.

Other KA affiliates in China were the Republic of Greater Mongolia and the Sovereign State of Manchuria, both of which had leaders sympathetic towards KA and followed Jiangsu's lead. Both of these states, like Jiangsu, were given significant amounts of military aid, which was used to increase their holdings at the expense of hostile warlords among the remnants of China.

In opposition to Kramer Associates were the Protectorate of Hunan, constantly at war with Jiangsu, the State of Turkestan (which stretched into central Asia as well), the Republic of Tibet, and the State of Sichuan, all of which were in sympathy to the United States of Mexico, and all signed the Charter of the Global Association for Peace at Port Babineaux. KA forcefully blockaded these nations and backed insurgency groups in them, hoping to convert them to KA suzerainty.

In Southeast Asia, the situation was similar. The Kingdom of Siam and the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea were hostile to KA, while the Union of Malaya and the Confederation of Vietnam were sympathetic to Salazar and followed the Jiangsu model of cooperation. Much like China, the former two were signatories to the GAP charter while the latter two remained in the influence of KA.

The Development of the Calculator - From 1948 to 1974

During the fire of the Global War, KA scientists were hard at work at the construction of a new device, mainly for the purpose of calculating revenues and expenses for the war effort. Based on the designs of the occasional inventor, these scientists, led by Samuel Herring, worked on what would be known as the electronic calculator.

Previous calculators, operated by a series of punch cards, had been in use as early as the 1880s, where in the CNA, Britain, and USM had been used for censuses and other accounting tasks. The Global War had spurred the necessity for a more efficient calculator, as the debts incurred by KA had become large enough that the human labor necessary for solving them effectively had become too costly. The electronic calculator would be their replacement.

Through the 1950s, Herring and his team worked at Taichung to ensure that their machines would work effectively at calculating basic equations. In 1955, the first electronic calculator, the EME (Electronic Mathematical Engine) was debuted to Carl Salazar, who enthusiastically approved of the device. After a demonstration of the device's power and capabilities, Salazar ordered that clones of the EME, the size of a large room, be installed in major KA facilities across Taiwan and the Philippines.

In 1955, Herring was contacted by Salazar to begin the preparation of the EME for military purposes, and disclosed the nature of the Taichung Project, the project which would result in the nuclear bomb. Herring was tasked with the creation of calculators that would assist in weapons development and testing, something which Salazar was of the utmost importance. In a speech to the KA Board of Directors in January of 1956:

"If we can have superior calculating power, we can have superior military power by the virtue of increased precision and accuracy. While the CNA and the USM may be guessing at their target, we will be calculating its exact location in seconds."

By the detonation of the first nuclear weapon as a result of the Taichung Project, Herring had proven his worth as an adept imparter (a term used for those who imparted data from the real world to the calculator), perhaps the most competent of imparters in the world. From here, Herring refocused his efforts to creating calculators that would be able to crack codes used to convey information among the intelligence agencies of the world.

In 1964, one of Herring's coworkers, Chester Findlay, had the idea of attaching a cathode ray tube, as used in vitavisions, to a calculator, enabling the graphical representation of data imparted into said calculator. This breakthrough in calculator science was embraced by KA and made standard throughout the firm. Cathode ray calculators (or CRCs) were used in KA weapons tests, and eventually cropped up in the agencies of other nations, but KA still held the lead.

In 1971, the launch of the Bernard Kramer satellite into extraterrestrial airspace was facilitated by CRCs, and Herring was congratulated, along with ballistics scientist Marcus Lustig, with its completion. Within the satellite were several calculators based on Herring's designs, which facilitated the transmission of vitavision signals to KA-backed broadcasting stations.

Before the launch of the Bernard Kramer, Lustig and Herring had collaborated on the development of the Intraplanetary Atmospheric Missile (IPAM), a form of missile designed to transport warheads of various sizes to points across the globe. The IPAM, the brainchild of KA ballistics scientist Charles Hodder, was designed to complement the Taichung Project's destructive power with a range that was in every sense capable serving as an "angel of death," in Hodder's words, to any nation that threatened the order of the War without War. Lustig aided him with the actual ballistics; Herring provided calculators for both mathematical calculations and tests. By 1971, IPAMs had the capability of being armed with nuclear warheads, and several with said warheads were aimed at Burgoyne, Mexico City, London, and Berlin.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Worden-Sykes Propaganda Machine

Upon Theodore Worden's haphazard ascension to the office of Governor-General of the Confederation North America, one of his initial actions was to create a new government agency to disseminate information regarding the unfolding crisis and then war in India. The official newspaper, the Confederation Herald and the official vitavision channel GCVT (for Grand Council Vitavision) were previously the only two state-owned apparatuses for the dissemination of information, but the early 1970s necessitated a change in government techniques. The CNA could not rely on the whims of the newspaper business, run by such moguls as Leslie Grisham of the Burgoyne Times or Garrett Leahy of the New York Post, Worden contended, and that a state-run enterprise was necessary to convey the "truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth," in the words of Worden in a speech to major Vitavision networks.

To head this new agency, the Confederation Bureau of Information Dissemination (CBID) was established, its headquarters being in the Pittsville neighborhood of Burgoyne, an affluent part of the city with major government buildings and many rich occupants. The head of the CBID would be a party boss from Michigan City, Indiana, by the name of Peter Sykes.

Peter Sykes was of English ancestry who immigrated from England during the 19th century, and settled in Michigan City to work in the factories (an occupation that would pay comparatively handsomely to someone of the poor stature of the Sykes family). Eventually, one of Peter's ancestors, Christian Sykes, would rise the ranks of Indiana Utilities (a major producer of ovens and other home supplies nationwide), a position which brought his family great wealth. Christian's son Bartholomew would take the position of head of the company in 1905 after the death of the company founder Harris Hickey. It was from this standpoint of business wealth that Peter was brought in.

Peter graduated from the University of Indiana in 1949 with a major in communications. He worked jobs with advertising agencies until 1954, where he got a job with the Michigan City People's Coalition. From there, he was found to be a master propagandist, leading for several Coalition councilmen elected from Michigan city during multiple election cycles. Thomas Chapman, a councilman who owed his election in no small amount to Sykes' advertising, had the following to say after his retirement in 1968:

"Peter Sykes is the communications wizard of Michigan City, nay, of Indiana. His films, his radio broadcasts, his print advertisements, his rallies all resulted in Coalition victory. If it weren't for him, I would have lost to Matthew Lewin, Robert Hiskey, or Fulton Macalister [Liberal opponents of Chapman]. The party owes him a great debt."

After the rise of the Imperativist movement in 1968, Sykes threw himself behind the Imperativist cause and began promoting it in newspapers, using his family wealth to fund this great endeavor. Theodore Worden took notice of this, and met with Sykes in 1970 in Philadelphia. The two turned out to quite like each other, and Sykes began designing advertisements and promoting for Imperativist fundraisers nationwide.

After the August 2nd attacks in Burgoyne, the ascension of Theodore Worden to the Governor-Generalship, the Invasion of India, and the foundation of the CBID, Sykes was Worden's first choice for the position. Sykes was a choice based not merely in qualifications, but also in politics (a connection many made). Not only did Sykes faithfully serve the Imperativist movement, he was also a masterful showman, of the likes of Richard Mason. His rallies were notable for attracting thousands to the Imperativist cause and drumming up support for the general draft for the Invasion of India. Indeed, after going to a rally where Sykes spoke, several young men Confederationwide volunteered before the draft went into effect.

A Sykes rally had the trappings of the 19th century political rally adopted to the contemporary political climate. The flag of the CNA would fly from every flagpole possible, as well as draped from buildings in the vicinity and on lampposts, accompanied by the flag of whatever confederation the rally was held in, along with any local or municipal flag that was applicable. To begin the rally, a large brass band, accompanied by a very large chorus, would perform The Call of Saratoga, the CNA national anthem, followed by a common Imperativist anthem Our Mandate Divine. This would be followed by a local party or government official, on the pleasantries one would expect. After this, Sykes would give a rousing, thunderously loud speech (powered by only his naturally loud voice) about the direness of the time. It was a frighteningly useful tactic.

From one of these rallies directly after the August 2nd attacks came two hallmarks of Sykes' characterization of Worden. At this speech, in Williamsville, Pennsylvania, Sykes declared:

"It is our requirement, now, to follow our new Governor-General into the future. He is a sage of our time, whose wisdom and genius we must heed if we are to leave this crisis with our institutions and traditions intact and our heads held high. Worden is the Leader. The Leader will save the nation."

After such a triumphant finish, Sykes raised his right hand to the sky, his elbow bent at a slight angle, and his pointer finger pointing towards the sky. This, he explained, was a salute in the style of the Romans (those more educated in the classics would indicate it was that of the Augustus of Prima Porta more than anything else). After this, his speech was interrupted by a chant of "The Leader will save the nation" with that salute. It would be copied the whole nation over.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Indian Domestic Response after the Invasion

The government of India was lukewarm about the prospect of the joint CNA-UBE force landing in Pondicherry at best. Only about half of the Indian delegates to the UBE were in favor of the military action, while the other half was decidedly against it. However, due to the majority of the UBE delegates from Britain proper, Victoria, and Australia were in favor of the invasion, said invasion was allowed to commence.

After the initial landings in Pondicherry CNA General Jared Ethan, the supreme commander of the invasion forces, addressed the Indian parliament in New Delhi. with Prime Minister Devan Mahajan and Governor Cyrus Greenfield in attendance. This speech, concerning the role of the occupation force and promises to the Indian government regarding said invasion forces, promised respect to Indian sovereignty and government institutions. In particular, Ethan made the promise that "no civilian will be harmed by our invasion force unless they explicitly take up arms against us or otherwise aid the butchers in the Indian Liberation Movement. All humanity is equal, and we, the civilized people of the United British Empire, respect that fundamental equality that permeates all men and women."

The three parties in the Indian parliament (Empire, Liberal Unionist, and Indian Congress for Independence (ICI)) each responded in different but predictable (to one acquainted with 1960s and early 1970s Indian politics) manners consistent with their established ideological viewpoints. The Empire Party, led by Latif Prabhu, a merchant representing Karachi in parliament, responded quite favorably to the arrival of the CNA and UBE troops, and prepared various supply collections throughout India to be given to homesick and confused soldiers from foreign lands. The Empire Party also sponsored rallies throughout India to promote enlistment in the Indian Army, and had moderate success in such efforts.

The Liberal Unionist Party still for the most part supported the arrival of the Imperial troops, but far more reservedly than the Empire Party. The Liberal Unionists, under party chairman Mitra Chadha, mainly promoted anti-ILM movements in the various cities of India, and built up support for their party simultaneously. Certain Liberal Unionist leaders opposed the landings in Pondicherry and the subsequent dispersal of CNA and UBE troops elsewhere in the country, and spoke at rallies and on vitavision to spread such sentiments. However, these Liberal Unionists made it very clear that violence against the Imperial troops would not be tolerated.

The Indian Congress for Independence (ICI) took a position much the same as the more isolationist Liberal Unionists; one opposed to the occupation but equally opposed to the extremist ILM and their philosophy of violence. ICI leader Shalya Grewal openly denounced Shamba Pandya in a vitavised speech in Hyderabad:

"This man 'knows' what is best for India only because his goals broadly align with our own. However, we are not the ones who have called for the butchering of Anglo-Indians. We are not the ones who have called for attacks on innocent civilians. We are not the ones who destroyed the legislature of an innocent nation, driving them into a fury that has caused them to invade our country. You have made quite a bargain, Pandya, and now all of our homeland will have to pay the price for this horrendous act."

In recognition of the current political climate, Grewal promised to hold no mass protests or rallies so long as the invasion force was occupying India, his reasoning being that the ICI could become the target of both the ILM and the imperial coalition forces, especially those who disobeyed orders and committed crimes against civilian populations. Rather, the ICI continued to lobby and encouraged ICI supporters to arm in case of an attack by either side. In this act, Grewal was ready to turn the ICI into his own army should India's eventual independence be threatened.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Mexican Foreign Policy after the Invasion of India

The United States of Mexico was firm in its denunciation of the United British Empire and the Confederation of North America as the Invasion of India commenced. Mexico was considered the great power most in tune with the developing world, and the majority of Latin American and African states were in concord with the government in Mexico City rather than Burgoyne or London. President John Paul Lassiter, after the Invasion of India, announced "full support for nonviolent efforts to remove the imperialists from India."

In what was and still is seen as a Mexican counterpoint to the invasion, Mexican Secretary of State Raymond Portillo toured several countries in East and Southeast Asia that were commonly deemed hostile to Kramer Associates, whose president, Carl Salazar, was outspokenly in favor of the intervention in India. The countries visited were the Protectorate of Hunan, State of Turkestan, Republic of Tibet, State of Sichuan, Kingdom of Siam, and Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, all of which were locked in conflict, often violent, with KA-backed states.

Raymond Portillo was a former Congressman from Durango, with ancestry from all three major Mexican ethnic groups. After the election of John Paul Lassiter in 1971, Portillo, an ally of Lassiter's in Congress who collaborated with him on several initiatives, was noted for his excellency in terms of foreign policy, and it was this trait that made Lassiter appoint Portillo as his secretary of state, replacing the outgoing Diego Quiroga, a longtime assistant of Raphael Dominguez.

On these visits, Portillo recognized these states' accession to the Global Association for Peace, and signed trade deals with them to replace the goods prohibited from flowing into them by KA blockades. Lassiter knew Salazar would not dare trifle with the power of the United States of Mexico now that it had the atomic bomb, and that a Second Global War would be detrimental to humanity at large. This implicit understanding between Taichung and Mexico City would continue for several years and prevent, at least initially, the Invasion of India blossoming into a new war between the world's major powers.

Portillo, under Lassiter's orders, arranged the signing of a treaty that expanded the Greater American Free Trade Agreement (GAFTA) to these East Asian and South Asian nations in a diplomatic meeting in Chengdu, Sichuan. With the attendance of both Asian and Latin American delegates, GAFTA was dissolved and replaced with the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement (GTLA), overseen by representatives from the Global Association for Peace. It was agreed that the GTLA would be sponsored by the GAP, and that GAP members would be welcome to join.

Many nations in Africa, such as the United Townships of Ghana, the Empire of Ethiopia, Sultanate of Morocco, and other countries on the continent. However, more isolationist nations, such as New Granada in South America, refused to join, citing a need to remain economically independent of other nations. Enrique Hermion, President of New Granada, said in a press conference in Caracas:

"The Greater American Free Trade Agreement was already forced upon us by Mexico City. I do not want any more Mexican megacorporations taking New Granada's resources for their own profit. We will remain in the Global Association for Peace, but we will withdraw from this 'free trade.'"

 

[SpanishSpy]

1973 in the Haste to Space

The year 1971 was an important year for space exploration, due to the launch of the Bernard Kramer from the Kramer Associates- Japanese launch base in Kyushu. Leaders around the world flocked to ensure that their nation would have the opportunity to go to the final frontier with dignity and honor intact. This would be a daunting task for all nations involved.

The United British Empire was the first nation to begin its work on satellites, with Prime Minister Gordon Perrow authorizing the creation of a program days after the Kramer launch. Due to agreeable latitude, a launch base was established in the northern parts of Victoria (Victoria was chosen over India due to the latter's political instability despite the closer latitude to the Kramer base). British ballistics scientist Mortimer Spaulding, a noted weapons scientist who made great strides in British defense technology during the 1960s and 1970s, was placed in command of the new Royal Extraterrestrial Ministry.

The Confederation of North America authorized a small expenditure to form a rocket base in Cape of Currents, Georgia, an area touted by the Georgian government as an ideal place for a satellite launch area, in 1971, approved by Carter Monaghan. After Monaghan's incapacitation, Maynard Thacker promised that he would increase expenditure towards the base with the goal of having a satellite launched by 1974, but no formal act was passed by the Grand Council due to said body's destruction in the Council Hill bombings.

After assumption of the role of Governor-General, Theodore Worden immediately promised a tenfold increase in spending not only on the military, but on space exploration. In a press conference in Philadelphia, Worden is on the record as saying:

"Space is the final great expanse; we have no grand western land, no hostile Mexican wilderness, no frigid Manitoban waste to explore, for we know them. Rather, space beckons to us, the Confederation of North America, to be welcomed to her arms, a sign to the world that we are indeed blessed by providence, and that we must go forth into the blackness and bring the progress of the British spirit to her."

Shortly after this speech, Worden sacked the former director of the Confederation Space Administration (CSA), Marshall Douglas, for reasons given as "lack of cooperation with Burgoyne." Political observers, however, saw otherwise: Douglas was a fierce backer of the Monaghan and Thacker governments and had repeatedly denounced the Imperativists as "radicals who want regression to the days before racial equality, before women's suffrage, before independence, even!" Worden replaced Douglas with another shining example of Confederation ballistics: Edmund Sotheby, an imperativist and weapons developer. Sotheby had endorsed Worden during his run for the Grand Council, and appeared with him and other Imperativists members of the Grand Council during a rally.

To the west, the United States of Mexico's Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, run by the physicist Martino Ramirez, an appointee of President John Paul Lassiter, led the Mexican effort to launch a rocket into space. The first Mexican launch base, known as the Vining Launch Area, was established at New Donetsk, Alaska, under Ramirez' instruction and Lassiter's endorsement. The previous Secretary of War, Vincent Mercator, had supported this measure, one of the few areas where Lassiter and Mercator agreed on anything other than basic Progressive doctrine.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Japan in the 1970s

After the end of the Global War, Japan lapsed into a state of less power than it had previously, as the position of supreme power in the Pacific fell to that of Kramer Associates, the company that came to dominate the Japanese defense industry and supply most of the Japanese Army. Japan, however, did have the Republic of Siberia at its disposal as its major trading partner, and also had the economic incentive of supplying aid to the countries of East and Southeast Asia in cooperation with Kramer Associates. Countries in these regions that were friendly to Kramer interests were guaranteed to be acceptable to Japanese firms, and also sources of migrant labor and natural resources.

In 1968, elections for Prime Minister were held in which the incumbent, Saburo Fujimori, a member of the Japanese Imperial Party (JIP), was challenged by Shotaro Ogino, an MP from Hiroshima and head of the newly founded Japanese Party for Cooperation and Growth (JPCG). The 1968 elections were framed in the context of the economic recession caused by the isolationist policies of the Fujimori government, which had withdrawn from the country's traditional alliance with the United British Empire, having fought alongside them in the Global War against the United States of Mexico and German Empire. The Fujimori government's policies had led to a mass decrease in international trade and attempted to boost Japanese agriculture to its reasonable maximum; in reality, Japanese farmland became overused and depleted of nutrients, and calls for an opening of trade became more prevalent.

Such was the incentive for the election of the JPCG, a party founded by Ogino in Hiroshima, backed by merchants, large corporations, and the military, while opposed by the JIP strongholds of small-scale farmers, nationalists, and the Japanese aristocracy. However, the Japanese middle class, cognizant of the recession caused by JIP isolationist policies, voted in favor of the JPCG in hopes of economic gain. In addition, Fujimori was widely considered to be a hypocritical ruler who had touted Japanese isolationism and nationalism while gladly taking as much Mason Doctrine aid the CNA would give them. He was also harshly criticized for cutting most ties with Kramer Associates, a company seen quite positively among most sections of the Japanese public.

As expected, Ogino won the election with a majority of seats going to the JPCG. On his inauguration day, Ogino promised renewal of the Japanese agreements with Kramer Associates and closer relationships with the countries of China that were friendly to Japanese influence, as well as those in southeast Asia. Ogino also announced his intention to reestablish diplomatic relations with Korea, who had lapsed into a similar isolation after the Global War. Korea before the Global War had been one of Japan's best trading partners, and Ogino promised a return.

In 1969, Ogino and the Japanese Parliament approved a proposal by KA scientist Marcus Lustig to build the world's first satellite base in Kyushu for the launch of the first artificial satellite, the Bernard Kramer. Lustig, a ballistics scientist who had worked with the Japanese army before the isolation of the Fujimori government, was well-liked in pro-KA circles in Japan. Ogino, a disciple of such schools of thought, eagerly accepted the offer to build the base there, but made sure Lustig and KA promise to use Japanese labor and supplies to the greatest extent possible. Carl Salazar, eager to reopen relations with an old ally, agreed.

Japan turned out to be the perfect site for such a base, being of appropriate latitude and longitude for such a base, and a labor force that was all too eager to sign up to work. Under Lustig's direction and Ogino's support, the base was completed in 1970 and the first artificial satellite, the Bernard Kramer, launched in October of 1871. Ogino, Lustig, and Salazar were all in attendance, and a crowd of Japanese workers cheered as the rocket carrying the satellite blasted into the air, proving humanity had entered space.

Ogino was especially lucky to have the launch occur at that time: 1972 was an election year. The launch, combined with the general Japanese economic recovery under the government of the JPCG, boosted the JPCG's fortunes in the election significantly. The JIP candidate, Takehide Okamoto, attempted to cast Ogino in the light of a traitor to the nation willing to sell Japan to Kramer Associates, but the sheer amount of jobs and high Compiled Revenue Figure (CRF, a measurement of the strength of an entire economy) made that argument seemed like the caviling of an old man. The JPCG was elected with a supermajority in parliament, and Ogino began his second term.

The first major foreign policy challenge Ogino, a mostly domestic-focused official, had to face was the joint CNA-UBE invasion of India. The Ogino government had issued messages of condolences to the victims of the Indian Liberation Movement's attacks in Victoria, India, and Australia, and had cooperated in UBE undercover operations in Japanese territory to find ILM agents operating out of the country. However, the Japanese public was, in accordance with a long-held belief, opposed to British rule in India in general, but was willing to ignore it so long as the United British Empire remained open to Japanese trade.

Ogino's Minister of Defense, Tokimasa Yamaoka, noted for his support of cooperation with Western powers, called for a Japanese detachment to aid the CNA and UBE in India, calling the ILM "butchers who kill the innocent. Can we, the good people of Japan, stand by these atrocities?" However, the rest of the JPCG was less committed to another armed conflict, and in October of 1972 voted against a detachment to India, which would have been placed under the command of CNA general Jared Ethan, the commander of the operation.

Despite the refusal to deploy the Japanese Army in India, the nation was still on the whole opposed to the United States of Mexico's attempts to gain favor. The wounds of the Global War still ran deep in the Japanese national consciousness, and Mexican nationals in Japan at the time recounted, in the words of Mexican journalist William Iverson, "a cold feeling towards Mexicans, who had disrupted Japan's rightful place in the Pacific. We Mexicans are not welcome here. Vendors try to scam us, police are more likely to turn us in, government officials usually just snub us. For the Jeffersonians or other Anglos reading this, do your best to approximate a CNA or British accent. If they can hear our Spanish-flavored mother accent, they will see us for who we are. Hispanos and Mexicanos, don't bother."

Iverson's words do summarize succinctly the Japanese few towards Mexico in general: one of deeply-rooted distaste. This distaste came to a boiling point in early 1974, when Mexican Secretary of State Raymond Portillo visited the countries in East and Southeast Asia hostile to Kramer Associates (and by extension Japan) and founded the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement, bringing these countries into the Mexican sphere of influence by way of the Global Association for Peace (an organization Ogino had refused to join). In a fit of rage, Ogino ordered the Japanese ambassador in Mexico City, Kazushige Yoshikawa, recalled, and expelled the Mexican ambassador in Kyoto, Peter Salguero.

To respond to what Ogino dubbed "a blatant hostility to our nation," Japanese Foreign Minister Shigeaki Seki called a meeting of diplomats from Jiangsu, Greater Mongolia, Manchuria, Siam, Kampuchea, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines (all essentially puppets of Kramer Associates), Siberia (a puppet of Kyoto), and Australia (a member of the UBE, friendly to Japan) to a summit in Osaka to draft a joint agreement to oppose Mexican interventionism in Asia. Here, the Osaka Agreement between these countries was signed. The countries of the Osaka Agreement agreed to not establish diplomatic relations with Mexico City, to defend each other in case of attack, and to not actively oppose the occupation of India.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Union of Australia in the 1970s

After the Global War, the Union of Australia suffered an intense disillusionment with the policies of the United British Empire, leading to what is now considered the 'national renewal phase' by historians. These policies were enacted by the Australian Sovereignty Party (ASP) Prime Minister Nathaniel Chambers, an MP from the city of Oxley on the southeastern coast of the continent, and a supporter of severing a good deal of ties with the mother country. Elected in 1948, Chambers' successors would continue his policies into the 1950s until a major change in policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Australian Sovereignty Party was founded in Port Philip, on the south coast of the continent, in 1899, the year of the signing of the Australian Unification Acts and the creation of the Union of Australia, uniting the colonies of New South Wales, Vandemonia, Flindersland, Swan River, Hicksland, and Herveysland. The ASP strongly encouraged policies that displayed Australian independence from Britain, as stated in a party manifesto from 1926, written by the first party head Malcolm Clegg:

"Mother Britain has entrusted her children in North America to govern themselves; I do not see why Australia should be any different. The policies of Salutary Neglect employed by London have benefitted us greatly, and it is only natural that we pursue independence within the Empire."

It was this spirit that became immensely popular during the days after the Global War, in which Australia feared attack by the forces of the United States of Mexico as well as the allied but threatening Empire of Japan, and the similarly threatening but friendly Kramer Associates, which were enough to put the wartime government, led by the Australian Shining Sun Party (SSP, a party which backed increased ties with Britain, named for the saying that the 'sun never set on the British Empire') and its Prime Minister Edmund Sheldon, on a weary edge. Under Sheldon, the Australian Parliament in Canberra authorized the deployment of Australian troops to India to fight the German invasion force - an unpopular measure, since the SSP and ASP were in coalition, against several regional parties with no common interest. This mandated the appointment of Courtney Judd, an ASP member, to the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Australian forces were later withdrawn from India to fight the Mexicans in the Pacific. The continent had to endure the prospects of two Mexican invasions as well as one from German New Guinea. However, Britain throughout the war constantly demanded Australia provide troops to fight in Europe.

This pestering by London left a bad taste in the mouths of Australians, calling for a withdrawal from the United Empire and the assumption of a similar status to the CNA in regards to Empire membership. The Sheldon government was challenged in 1948 when the ASP withdrew from the coalition and forced a vote of no confidence. The 1948 elections, held when the war was winding down and the Mexicans too busy in China to bother with Australia, were focused around the question of how many ties with Britain would be maintained. The ASP, led by Nathaniel Chambers, won the election in a wide margin, and was subsequently elected Prime Minister, with a large parliamentary majority as well.

The Chambers government announced in 1950, after two years of sponsoring reclamation programs in Herveysland and the northern parts of Flindersland, that the Union of Australia would

"No longer be Britain's little boy, no matter how much London may wish it to be otherwise. We will remain with our brothers in the Empire, but they will just be that: brothers, not commanders. We refuse to send our men to fight in foreign trenches without any direct threat to Australia, and we will pursue a foreign policy independent of the Empire and more beneficial to Australian interests."

This foreign policy was one of less obedience to London in exchange to de facto loyalty to a power much closer to home: Taichung, home of Kramer Associates. The company had been a major arms supplier to Australia during the Global War, and company President Carl Salazar was eager to keep Australia in the Kramer Associates sphere of influence. Salazar, in a meeting with Chambers, ensured that shipments of goods through the Indian Ocean through Kramer-dependent states in Africa would continue unimpeded in return for similar promises regarding the Kramer usage of Australian resources and labor in their own projects. Chambers agreed with this policy, and the Port Philip Accords were signed in in the eponymous city to officiate the agreement.

The early 1950s are considered an experimental period in Australian political history, initiating a time of foreign policy unimpeded by London bureaucrats. With the aid of Kramer Associates, Australia increased its diplomatic and economic popularity in Africa and East Asia, negotiating trade deals with several countries and giving Australia a near-monopoly on important natural resource markets, enriching the country in newfound capital never before seen to Canberra and the people at large. However, there was a hesitance of crossing the paths of Britain or Mexico. A Member of Parliament from Hobart, Julius Grossman, an SSP member, encapsulated the general feeling in a speech to Parliament in 1952:

"Australia right now is like the sheltered youth now off to university in another city, prone to the discovery of vices such as sex and alcohol. This experimentation is tempting, but it can lead to the sins of sodomy and addiction, both of which lead to eternal damnation in the eyes of the Lord. Let not our nation succumb to such things in its experimentation."

This cautiousness in regards to foreign policy was found ultimately justified in the Republic of Mutapa, a country rich in minerals in southeastern Africa which had recently gained independence from France. In the absence of French authority, foreign investors came rushing into the country to negotiate settlements for the exploitation of natural resources, efforts laid dormant after the French withdrawal. By early 1952, the two major countries were the Canberra Mineral Company (CMC), based in Canberra and with significant backing from Kramer Associates, and the Pinckney Extraction Corporation (PEC), a British company based in Bristol, England. By that year, each corporation had the backing of a significant party in Mutapan politics. Mutapan President Faraji Semprebon was backed by the CMC while the opposition leader Tendaji Bordelon was backed by the PEC.

Mutapan politics at the time were already tense due to questions of foreign policy and racial harmony, and the backing of rival parties by the two corporations only served to make matters worse. In April of 1952, during the nation's second election cycle, fighting broke out between supporters of Semprebon and Bordelon in several towns, fighting which would spread to the cities. Since it was public knowledge of both parties' corporate backings, the international community was immediately aware of such things, spurring denunciations of both Britain and Australia by world leaders, including by CNA Governor-General James Billington, who remarked that "such bloodshed is antithetical to the British spirit that governs both nations," and Mexican president Felix Garcia, who proclaimed that the war was a sign of the "butchery and bloodlust that is the very foundation of the British Empire."

Both Britain and Australia scrambled to find a solution, which resulted in the Rutledge Conference in August of that year, after approximately seven thousand deaths in the country, in the capital of Victoria. British, Australian, and Mutapan delegates from both sides met to discuss an end to the war. The eventual agreement, the Rutledge Accords, reformed the Mutapan government into something more resembling the CNA with a federalized system for each major ethnic group. Both nations promised to reign in their respective corporations and direct relationships in terms of money were to be banned between businesses and Mutapan political parties. Both Britain and Australia were shamed by this effort, and resulted in a curtailing of Mason Doctrine Aid in 1953 after Richard Mason's election to the governorship of the CNA.

The fallout in Australia was massive, with public scrutiny so deep that there were open calls for Chambers' resignation even within the ASP. Bowing down to public opinion, Chambers resigned in early 1953 and replaced by the more moderate ASP member Daniel Duncan, who barely survived a vote of no-confidence election in 1954 and continued policies of Australian assertiveness in foreign policy, but made sure to never get involved in a conflict of the magnitude of the Mutapan Civil War.

However, another vote of no-confidence was called in 1955 after the botching of a trade agreement with the State of the Benadir, another country in East Asia, which resulted in the expulsion of the Australian ambassador in the capital of Hamar and the imposition of 400% tariffs imposed on all Australian-manufactured goods. The election was fought over perceived ASP incompetence in foreign policy on one hand, and another pressing issue on the other hand: the rise of Mercator in Mexico.

The rise of Vincent Mercator, first Secretary of War, then President of the United States of Mexico, deeply troubled the Australian population, who feared a restarting of the Global War due to the Progressive Party's aggressive rhetoric and heightened militarization. Of special concern was the reopening of Niles Naval Base in Hawaii, which had been decommissioned during the final years of the Silva regime. Niles Naval Base was the main departure point for the Mexican ships that had tried to invade Australia multiple times during the Global War, and Australian war veterans were among the most vocal groups.

This rise in discontentment with the ASP on election day gave the SSP its first win in more than a decade, giving the SSP a majority in parliament under the new Prime Minister Bernard Wesley, an MP from Sydney. On his inauguration day, Wesley proclaimed "a new birth of cooperation between Britain and Australia, a grand rapprochement from the follies that were the Mutapan Civil War and the Benadir Incident, a defense against Mexico, and continued economic prosperity." Wesley's first act in office was to call the British ambassador to the Prime Minister's mansion in Canberra for an official dinner, in which new positive relations would be maintained. In 1954, Wesley visited London and met with British Prime Minister Edward Tattersall for similar reasons.

However, Wesley knew not to interfere with the ASP policies that were popular, the cooperation with Kramer Associates high among them. In October of 1954, Wesley travelled to Taichung to meet with Carl Salazar, and the two reaffirmed the agreements made with the Port Phillip Accords, guaranteeing Kramer access to Australian natural resources and labor. Wesley also urged Salazar to extend the same to the rest of the United British Empire. Salazar was not enthusiastic, but said he would consider the offer.

Under Wesley, the defense relationship between Britain and Australia was tightened significantly, and Australia formally rejoined the United British Empire with all that entailed. This relationship led to British forces being stationed in parts of Australia, joint military exercises, and in 1965 allowed the British to test their first nuclear bomb in the Outback. This was after two elections in which Wesley's popularity allowed him to retain control over the government, defeating a substantially weakened ASP both times.

In 1967, an aged Wesley, 72 years old by then, died of a stroke in his office in Canberra. The nation mourned, Britain, the CNA, and other countries along with Kramer Associates sent their condolences, and the question of who the next Prime Minister would be was of critical importance. New elections were held in 1967, in which Wesley's popularity was demonstrated in that the SSP was elected yet again, and its candidate, the MP from New Inverness, Flindersland, Elmore Lewin, rose to the office of Prime Minister.

For the next five years, Lewin ran the country much as Wesley did, cooperating with Britain militarily and economically, while still placing emphasis on the relationship with Kramer Associates and opposition to the United States of Mexico, surviving yet another election. Lewin also endured the bombings of late 1973 in Canberra, in which he sternly denounced the ILM. In 1973, however, with the Council Hill Bombing and the deaths of most of the CNA Grand Council, Lewin immediately promised aid to the CNA and immediately committed troops to the Occupation of India.

Lewin also caused a small controversy when he signed on to the Osaka Agreement with the Empire of Japan, formally aligning Australia with Japan and its allies, most of which were Kramer puppets, in March of 1974. In response to this, Lewin replied that:

"Japan is an ally of Kramer Associates and hence an ally of us. Let us defend our homeland and quell the terrorists in India and in China. Our homeland must come first, and they are a grave, grave threat. You are either with civilization or with the terrorists."

 

[SpanishSpy]

Europe in the 1970s

After Chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier's unification of the realms of the German Empire in 1971, the balance of power in Europe, formerly a relic of what remained after the Global War, shifted significantly. The inauguration of the first Diet of the new German Empire, consisting of Germany proper, France, the Associated Russian Republics, the Ukraine, Poland, and the Sultanate of Arabia, now would dominate continental politics, to the chagrin of the various powers of Europe that had once known glory but now saw a world with said glories fading, seeing the rise of the Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico, and Kramer Associates.

The multilingual German Empire's formation was a source of great worry from other national capitals on the continent, including London, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Copenhagen, and others. These nations shut down their embassies in the capitals of the conquered nations and increased significantly their presence in Berlin. This new continental power would be indeed be the decider of peace or war on the already war-weary continent. Chancellor Kiermaier, to absolve their worries, had a conference in Paris to assuage their worries. Among these assembled heads of government were British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Serafini, Spanish Prime Minister Maria Calderon, Portuguese Prime Minister Joao Araujo, Swiss President Gunter Weierbach, and Scandinavian Prime Minister Oskar Eilert, all noted statesmen with their own interests regarding the continent's future.

Gordon Perrow, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, represented a constituency in Yorkshire when nominated by the Whig party against both the Conservatives and Liberals (the Whigs were a centrist party neither Conservative nor wholly Liberal) in 1968 in a coalition with the Liberals against the Conservatives. Perrow's immediate interests at the time of the Paris conference in mid-1973 were in India, due to the ongoing invasion and threats of the Indian Liberation Movement. However, the people of the United Kingdom did indeed fear the rise of a new nation that had access to the vast resources of Germany, France, and Russia, which seemed at best ambivalent towards Britain. Perrow, following the zeitgeist that flowed throughout London and the rest of the nation, denounced Germany's "enslaving of other nations to do tis bidding." Notably, this made no mention of the British Empire, nor the Mutapan Civil War of the 1950s.

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Serafini was a member of the Italian Parliament from Florence, who had been elected on the platform of continuing popular post-Global War platforms of the peacetime leadership led by fellow conservative Marcelo DeLazzari, who favored direct investment in the areas of Italy that had fought France alongside Germany. Serafini's presence was not much else than a reaffirmation of the good relations held between Germany and Italy; the two countries had been friendly to one another since the 19th century. The Italian public, however, was skeptical of Germany; this was shown in a 1971 plebiscite in which Germany offered Italy to join the new union under the German crown. The Italians liked their monarchy under Giovanni III and an independent foreign policy which brought money to Italian coffers due to investment in the states of the former Ottoman Empire.

Maria Calderon was possibly the most peculiar of the leaders at the Paris Conference. Calderon was the first female member of parliament elected to office in Spain, representing a town on the outskirts of Madrid. Calderon became Prime Minister, the first woman to hold such a position in all of Europe, in 1966 after her party's Prime Minister Enrique Santamaria resigned due to accusations of money laundering during his election campaign. Calderon, his deputy prime minister, hence ascended to the office of Prime Minister and appointed Mariano Saenz, from Barcelona, to take her place. Under Calderon, Spain continued its path of neutrality, isolating itself from too much intervention by either Britain or Germany, rather turning its attention towards the Western Hemisphere. It was Calderon that led Spain to become one of the members of the Global Association for Peace upon said organization's foundation by Mexican President John Paul Lassiter.

Portuguese Prime Minister Joao Araujo was from the city of Coimbra, and like Spain was a committed devotee of Portuguese neutrality, which had held firm during the Global War. Araujo also had friendly relations with the Mexicans, and joined the GAP and sent representatives to the Port Babineaux conference in 1973. Araujo was an admirer of Vincent Mercator, and modeled his policies in Portugal after Mercator's reconstruction of Mexican society. Araujo even met with Lassiter in late 1972, in which both praised their nations' commitments to equality.

The Swiss and the Scandinavians were much like the Portuguese and Spaniards in that they were both committedly neutral nations determined to be independent of any other nation. However, unlike Calderon and Araujo, their leaders saw an implicit danger in trusting the Global Association for Peace, which was rapidly deemed as an instrument of Mexican imperialism. At the Paris Conference, their leaders did little more than marvel at the sites of the city, and were quiet during actual meetings.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Lassiter-Roderickson Scandal of 1974

In his youth, as stated before, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter was known in his hometown of Puerto Hancock to be something of a womanizer; there are fragmented accounts from his teenage and young adult years of several flings with young women, both in his youth in secondary school and later during his Global War service in China. Those who knew him repeatedly expressed surprise that he had married after graduating secondary school, to Carmela Barrera (the daughter of Lassiter's father's coworker), and the chismeadores (the Mexican term for gossip columnist, as described in English) attempted to interview his former classmates and comrades in arms during the 1971 elections, but those that attempted to have particularly inflammatory material published often found themselves visited by Progressive Party stalwarts that had defected to Lassiter's campaign.

What was known of the Mexican first family's relationship appeared rocky to the public; many inferred that their marriage was encouraged by the Lassiter and Barrera families as an economic insurance policy - neither family wanted their fortunes, meager as they may be, from falling into the hands of either a convenience store chain mogul or other competitor (this proved to be for naught; Carmela's older brother, Luis, sold the store in 1952). As such, their relationship was rocky, with no children being produced, and one Chismeador, Adalberto Costilla y Harris, speculated in the National Investigator that their marriage had never been consummated. It is interesting to note that Costilla y Harris ceased writing shortly after the publication of said rumors, and the National Investigator's offices burned down within a week after his departure.

It was known to the public, however, the two happened to argue quite frequently. When the first couple of the nation sat for an interview with the Palenque Nightly News (the official vitavision channel of the state of Chiapas) and the subject of their personal life came up, the two entered a fierce argument about the subject of potential past children, and led to both storming out of the studio early, leaving in different directions. Rumors swirled of a divorce; however, the two were seen together the next day in a press conference in Veracruz, their quarrel apparently resolved.

In January 1974, the Lassiters paid a visit to Jefferson City to meet the Governor of Jefferson, James Anthony Roderickson, and the general in charge of the military forces guarding the Jeffersonian border with the CNA, Julio Recinos, to discuss the possibility of hostilities between the two countries. The day was uneventful during the summit, and Carmela spent the day shopping in the nationally renowned commercial districts of Jefferson City. However, when Carmela returned to Madison House (the Mexican President's official residence on official business to Jefferson City and the former home of James Madison), the President was nowhere to be found.

Carmela, in a panic, ordered the Presidential guard to find him, and they scrambled to find him, and so they scrambled their locomobiles and those of the Jefferson City Police, with even a few terramobiles from Fort Jackson (the main military base of the area) being scrambled; indeed the entire city was placed on high alert. Eventually, the President was found in a prominent café in the city with Governor Roderickson's daughter, Julia Roderickson. The implications of this were obvious.

The chismeadores, and the Mexican press in general, were in an uproar. Their suspicions were confirmed; Lassiter was a womanizer and there was no doubt about it. Carmela was enraged, and publicly assaulted John Paul in the streets. The police broke them up, and the President apologized on national vitavision the afternoon of the next day. Some of the devout Catholics in Congress called for his removal from office, but Mexican Supreme Justice Miguel Oleastro (another Progressive Party plant) said there was no legal ground for his removal. He issued a statement thusly:

"President Lassiter's behavior is hardly honorable, but there is no constitutional requirement for any degree of chivalry in the performance of the President's duties, only professionalism and competence. To Canon Law or Moral Law, he may have committed a great crime, but to Mexican law he has committed no infraction."

 

[SpanishSpy]

A short biography of Julio Recinos

Julio Recinos was born in San Miguel de Cozumel, Chiapas, on March 4th, 1920, to Marco and Angela Recinos, Mexicano peasants who worked for Mexican Fisheries as fishmongers. Mexican Fisheries, headquartered in Victorville, Jefferson, was the main employer among the poor of San Miguel de Cozumel, and in his childhood Julio learned how to fish much like his parents, and expected to grow up to be like them.

However, with the outbreak of the Global War in 1939, Recinos, nineteen years old, joined the Mexican military in a show of patriotism, as did many in San Miguel de Cozumel. Recinos was deployed initially in Siberia and later took part in the invasion of Manchuria. Recinos was known for being a very lawful, very obedient soldier, and did not go to the brothels and bars that his fellow soldiers frequented. Indeed, like many on the island of Cozumel, he was quite religious, and in addition to being a soldier he was a religious councilor who aided the Mexican chaplainry in giving spiritual comfort to the soldiers in China. Here, Recinos rose to the rank of Captain in the army due to various acts of valor, but he did not receive the same accolades that were won by John Paul Lassiter.

After the withdrawal from China, Recinos was sympathetic to the cause of the Mercatorists, seeing Mercator's plan for redistribution of wealth to be a cornerstone of the Catholic faith, and called upon his fellow Catholics to join in the overthrowing of the Silva regime. After winning a battle against the Causa de Justicia in Durango in 1951, he received for his loyalty and assistance in supporting national unity under the new government, Recinos was given a Generalship. Recinos deserved this appointment; he was a strategic mastermind.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Recinos saw the internal occurrences of the Confederation of North America, and deemed the nation a selfish one, hardly caring for the truly poor peoples of the world. His Catholic faith was the main justifier behind this, and it was by his urgings that Guillermo Buenaventura, the Bishop of the diocese of Mexico City (the main diocese in central Mexico) to formally denounce the CNA and follow Mercatorist party line. In a speech in Tampico, Recinos decried Mexico's northern neighbor as a nation ruled by the devil himself, a signifier of his distaste.

In 1965, shortly before the national elections, Vincent Mercator redrew the military districts of the nation to better reflect the current geopolitical situation. Recinos was assigned to the Jefferson Border District, comprising the state of Jefferson and parts of Mexico del Norte and ordered to modernize the defenses and their deployments. In cooperation with General Matthew Norris, a Nortean himself and commander of the Northern Border region, Recinos made what Raphael Dominguez dubbed the "Great Wall of Mexico," a series of bases designed to throw off any invasion from the CNA.

Recinos held this position well into the 1970s, and was praised by President John Paul Lassiter, who he met with in 1974 in the meetings that would have the Lassiter-Roderickson scandal as the highlight. Recinos thought little of Lassiter's morality, but understood that he, as the President, had ultimate sway over the Mexican military.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Worden's Grand Council and Domestic Reception

In the August 2nd attacks, the Confederation of North America's legislature, the Grand Council, was reduced to the thirty imperativists that proclaimed loyalty to the ideology of Theodore Worden. In Worden's house in Burgoyne after the attack, Worden and the remnants of the Grand Council proclaimed an emergency government of the variety enacted during the Global War, a move seen by many as dictatorial. However, in a speech to the press shortly after the bombing, Worden guaranteed the current state of emergency would only be temporary.

Of the thirty, there arose the need for new officers to continue the actions of the Confederation government, not least a need for a successor in case another attack of that variety were to occur. The Council President, of which Maynard Thacker was before Carter Monaghan's resignation and his subsequent death in the August 2nd bombings, was the designated successor of the Governor-General in case of the former's death. The new Council President was a Councilman by the name of Isaac Whitley, of Trenton, New Jersey, Northern Confederation. Whitley, before the bombings, was known in the Confederation news media as Worden's right-hand man, and his appointment to the second highest office in the nation was surprising to little.

Worden knew he had to at least maintain the façade of a parliamentary democracy in his accession to power, and allowed the remnants of the government to vote on a council party leadership which would have little practical power but gave the impression that CNA democracy was still functioning. The new majority leader was James Hatton of New York City and the new majority whip was Anthony Cawley of Coningsby, Manitoba. When Worden was busy, Hatton and Cawley took the initiative in appearing in rallies and talking to the press (Whitley did the same on occasion).

It was this rump Grand Council that replaced most of the Monaghan-era Confederation officials with Imperativist loyalists. Ernest O'Donnell, the infamous suppressor of the Michigan City riots, was appointed the head of the Confederation Bureau of Intelligence and replaced the previous Orton MacPherson, who had resigned in disgust. Likewise, the newly created government agency, the Confederation Bureau of Information Dissemination, was put under the command of Peter Sykes, a People's Coalition speaker and media mogul who had helped Worden gain election to the Grand Council. Such acts of cronyism and patronage were often common in the CNA but not to this extent or obviousness, but the nation did not care - it was mourning, and such sadness was blown into anger during the invasion of India.

The same could be said for the entire popular perception of the CNA government after August 2nd. Most agreed the draft imposed to raise troops for the invasion was necessary. The apparent loss of representation for wide swaths of the country was lamented but was generally understood as a temporary setback in the fight against Shamba Pandya and the Indian Liberation Movement. The flag-waving and anthem-singing was demonstration of that. A quote from an interview between a reporter from the Burgoyne Herald and a passerby in Burgoyne is a good summary of the general feeling:

"It's a tragedy that CNA democracy has been destroyed in such a way, but that is only a testament to how terrible the ILM is. This is why I'm registering with the draft; I want to fight them. They're enemies of our nation and enemies of the republic that we serve. If it requires a smoother decision making process, so be it."

 

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Deployment of the Mexican Armed Forces as of January 1974

In the 1970s, the Mexican Armed Forces were deployed to prevent any antagonistic element, foreign or domestic, from being capable of harming the United States in any way, shape, or form. This paranoia was fostered during the Fuentes and Silva administrations, and brought to the forefront of the Mexican people during the Mercator and Dominguez administrations. The Lassiter administration continued this track of cautiousness by refusing to reorganize the military districts that had the entire country under the lock of the military, which reported directly to the President.

The country was divided into several military districts, and the coasts under their own authorities in case of any threat. In the north was Julio Recinos' Jefferson Border District, headquartered in Blainesburg, Jefferson, a town close to the border with the Southern Confederation of the CNA. In Mexican military strategy, it would be Blainesburg that would be the forefront of any assault into Jefferson by the Confederation of North America. In addition to Blainesburg, additional fortifications were in Hamilton (a town on the Mississippi River) and Batesville, a town in the northern parts of Jefferson.

To the north was the Alaskan-Old North Border District, overseen by general Matthew Norris. Headquartered in Alkaevgrad, Alaska, and with jurisdiction extending into northern parts of Mexico del Norte and Arizona, this district's intention was to defend against a CNA incursion into Alaska, and above all the defense of San Francisco and Puerto Hancock, the two major Mexican cities anywhere near this district (the Alaskan capital of Nikolaevsk was also a minor city deemed worth of defending).

Domestically, each state had its own military districts, each headquartered in a major city. In California, there were four districts: San Fernando, Puerto Hancock, Loreto (comprising the Baja California peninsula), and Levittsburg (the far northern part of the state). These were intended to simultaneously defend the state from a CNA incursion through the Rocky Mountains, specifically the cities of San Francisco, Puerto Hancock, Sacramento, San Fernando, and Santo Tomas, and to fight against rebellions, something which Mercator so desperately feared.

Arizona and Mexico del Norte each had two military districts, centered around their capitals, Sangre Roja and Conyers respectively, and one each around two northern cities, in Arizona's case Mendoza and Mexico del Norte's case Morales. In both cases, these were intended to defend the state capitals against a CNA force which was successfully able to defeat the forces of the Alaskan-Old North Border District.

Jefferson was a special case, divided into five districts in addition to the Jefferson Border District. These districts were seated in, respectively, Moreton (a city in the northwestern part of the state), San Antonio, Nacogdoches, Arnold, and Jefferson City respectively. Due to the violence that enraptured the state in the 1950s and 1960s, Mercator had deemed the additional security necessary, and the possibility of an invasion from the CNA was simply too great in his eyes.

Durango, while not having any borders with the CNA or other hostile, was divided into a mind-boggling ten districts, with the most heavily armed headquartered in Torreon, the state capital. These districts were the descendants of the encampments instituted to fight the Black Justice Party and the Causa de Justicia during Mercator's early administration. With this origin of violence, it is no wonder that Durango was the most heavily garrisoned state in the USM.

Chiapas was in a similar state to Durango, with five districts each centered around different cities. There was also the Chiapas Border district under the command of General Ambrosio Gomez, tasked with the responsibility of defending the country against a perceived potential threat from Guatemala, which, for whatever reason, was heavily suspected by Mercator to be harboring those hostile to the new Progressive regime in Mexico. However, news from Guatemala City pointed to only good relations with the USM, as they had joined the Global Association for Peace.

On the Mexican coasts, there were four districts: one defending the gulf coast, one defending the southern Pacific coast of Durango and Chiapas, one defending the Californian coast, and one defending the Alaskan coast. In addition to these, the only defenses for the states of Hawaii and the Mexican Antilles were naval; these were headquartered in the state capitals and reported to the nearest mainland naval district.

 

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Siberia in the mid-twentieth century

The Republic of Siberia in the middle of the twentieth century (here used to describe the end of the Global War to the beginning of the era begun by the Invasion of India by the Confederation of North America and the United British Empire) was a nation with an identity crisis. Founded by a Mexican imperialist war to take control of Alaska and used as a puppet state by them, Siberian Premier Mikhail Kuznetsov agreed to let the Mexican military use Siberian bases to attack Japan. However, with the end of the Global War and the Japanese invasion and occupation of the country, it had been under the beck and call of Kyoto. The contemporary Siberian government had to strike a fine line between maintaining the heritage of the first leaders of the nation such as George Tsukansky and the will of its Japanese ally.

Premier Kuznetsov was in every respect pro-Mexican, as well as anti-Russian imperialist in nature (he appeared to turn a blind eye to Mexican imperialism, however). His signing of pro-Mexican trade agreements to benefit the country's relatively new northwestern state of Alaska only solidified him as a puppet of Mexico City to his opponents, chief among them a lawyer from Yakutsk by the name of Feodor Somsikov.

Somsikov was the leader of the Siberian Party of Self-Determination which actively opposed intervention by Mexico City in Siberian affairs. When Mexican President Silva proposed to Premier Kuznetsov the joint attack on Japan, in Congressional deliberations on the subject Somsikov repeatedly voiced his displeasure with the measure, going on to state that "Kuznetzov is nothing more than a marionette played by the bureaucrats in Mexico City, much like the colonies of the great nations of Europe are puppets of London, Paris, or Berlin."

With the outbreak of the Pacific front of the Global War, Somsikov lead a cadre of likeminded congressmen to protest the outbreak of war. Withdrawing to the Laptev Sea port of Tiksi, they refused to promote the cause of war espoused by Silva and Kuznetsov, holing up in a small house for the duration of the war. Here, they published dissenting literature that encouraged soldiers to leave the Siberian army, charging that Kuznetsov was involving them in a foreign war at the behest of the United States, and did the same to young men who were to register to the draft to refuse to do so and indeed flee into isolation for the remainder of the war.

With the fall of Udsk in 1948, Somsikov was contacted by the commanding general of the Japanese invasion force Hotaka Fujioka to be the new premier of the country, as the previous government they had deemed to be illegitimate. After long deliberation Somsikov agreed and was installed as the new premier of the Republic of Siberia, an occasion marked by a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister Kichiro Kagome who spoke at said inauguration. He appeared to begin to lead Siberia into a new age of democracy and personal liberty, causes for which good remarks came from London, Burgoyne, and Canberra.

However, Somsikov now had power, and appeared by all accounts to be intoxicated by the position of ruling his own nation. His first decree in 1950 was to have the Siberian congress approve a resolution making him president-for-life, a move criticized by both internal and external observers. This was a dictatorial move in the manners of Kuznetsov, and to his critics he was forever branded a hypocrite. He maintained his integrity in a speech to the Siberian press:

"If I am around to secure the personal liberty of all for the longest time, so much the better. I know how to run this country and so therefore its liberties will be forever defended."

In March of 1950, riots broke out in Yakutsk by those who had formerly supported Somsikov and were disenchanted by his power grabs in Udsk. Initially peaceful, local police had opened fire on the crowd, and subsequently turned violent, causing a good portion of the city's population to go violent, destroying a good fifth of the city proper and several hundred deaths. The Great Fire of Yakutsk, dubbed so after the similar great fire in London centuries ago, was known internationally for the terror it inspired in international observers.

Somsikov's first and only reaction was to send in the Siberian military to quell the riots. Within days, troops had been flowing in from bases in Magadan and Vladivostok, armed with old Global War era military materiel. Several hundred more deaths ensued, and Somsikov was branded a traitor to his original ideals of personal liberty.

Nevertheless, with the aid of the Siberian Military, Somsikov maintained power through the 1950s and 1960s into the 1970s, still as an ally of the Japanese Empire. In 1973, with the CNA-UBE invasion of India, Somsikov consulted the Japanese Prime Minister Shotaro Ogino about possibly joining the invasion coalition, but Ogino advised against it. With Ogino's blessing and support, Siberia signed the Osaka Accords in 1974, confirming the long held view that Siberia was a military disciple of Japan.

 

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New Granada in the 1970s

Under the dominion of the Hermion political dynasty since the beginning of the twentieth century, New Granada found itself more or less at the beck and call of Mexico City, something the elites in Bogota found most unpleasant. However, the Hermion dynasty as the decades past found itself looking more towards their own interests than those of their ancestral homeland.

During the Global War, New Granada had declared war on Japan, Great Britain, and France just as the United States of Mexico had, and sent forces to Siberia as part of the Bolivar Brigade (named after Simon Bolivar, the national hero of New Granada who had secured the country's independence during the Trans-Oceanic War). The Bolivar Brigade had fought in China alongside the Mexicans and Siberians, and withdrew when president Silva gave the orders to do so. New Granadan President Carl Hermion saw this retreat as a "surrender, a forfeiture of the worst kind."

With the debut of the Mercatorists in Mexico and the overthrow of Alvin Silva, Carl Hermion found them to be much more agreeable than the Silva government. Hermion happily had his ambassador to Mexico City, Edgardo Arocha, present his credentials to the new government. Throughout the twentieth century Hermion continued to support the Mercatorist regime until his death in 1965, at the age of 89.

Carl's successor, Enrique Hermion, was not nearly as endeared to the Mexicans as his father was. He viewed them as meddling too much in the affairs of New Granada, and repeatedly expressed shame that his family had come to power as per Mexican intervention. "My great-grandfather Victoriano was only put in power in this country because of his brother Benito's warmongering. It is my penance that I support more independence for the people of New Granada in the name of Bolivar and the other founders of this nation."

To Mercator, Dominguez, and later Lassiter, Hermion's policies regarding relations with Mexico were troubling. In 1967 he approved a piece of legislature passed by the New Granadan parliament removing various benefits to Mexican businesses investing in New Granada, most importantly their oil in the Caribbean sea. However, Mexican ambassador Carlos Wilson, a longtime diplomat from Chiapas, was able to successfully reinstate most of these benefits via the mass buyoffs of New Granadan MPs using money specifically set aside for that purpose by President Lassiter.

The Greater American Free Trade Agreement was virulently opposed by Hermion, calling it a grand 'sellout' to the business interests in Mexico City. However, Wilson, the 'snake of the north,' was able to buy out more New Granadan MPs to pass the measure. However, Hermion did approve of joining the Global Association for Peace (GAP) and personally attended the Port Babineaux conference in the United Townships of Ghana, signing the GAP Charter on the behalf of New Granada.

However, with the extension of GAFTA into the Global Trade Liberalization Agreement (GTLA), Hermion announced New Granada would withdraw from the trade agreements that came with the GAP while remaining within the organization itself. This elicited reactions of bewilderment in Mexico City, Guatemala City, Rio de Janeiro, and Port Babineaux, but was accepted elsewhere. European countries which had joined the GAP, such as Spain and Portugal, did not sign the agreements either, and understood the New Granadan question.

In 1974, with the Invasion of India well underway, Hermion shocked the world by meeting with Jonathan Winnicott, Chief Executive of Imperial Vulcazine, a major vulcazine distributor in the United British Empire, affiliated with various North American companies. At this meeting in La Guairá, Hermion and Winnicott discussed the possibilities of Imperial Vulcazine establishing rigs in the Caribbean sea. To the shock of the international community, the ultimate agreement was that, by 1976, Imperial Vulcazine would be able to start construction of oil rigs.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Greater German Empire in the 1970s

After the consolidation of France, the Netherlands, the Associated Russian Republics, and Arabia into a grand confederation with Germany, the Greater German Empire, Germany under her chancellor Reinhold Kiermaier was forced to choose between the two growing blocs in the world stage: the Global Association for Peace, ruled from Mexico City, and the greater British Empire and its allies, ruled jointly from London and Burgoyne. Kiermaier's domestic and foreign policy was focused on asserting a 'third bloc' independent of either of the former two. In a speech in Hamburg, Kiermaier stressed the necessity of "making sure we are beholden to no other nation or collection of nations."

In 1972, Kiermaier secured the admission of Poland into the Greater German Empire, and Polish delegates were sent to the Diet in Berlin late in that year. Despite the occasional disapproving proclamation from minor nations on the world stage, Polish accession was achieved with not much violence (one brief outburst of violence in Warsaw being one of the few exceptions). It is mainly due to the admission of Russia as a member of the GGE that Poland joined without much commotion; being beset on both sides by a superstate was considered unsafe to an independent Polish nation.

Germany's allies at the time were mainly focused in two areas: Italy and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was divided into three parts: Arabia, Persia, and Anatolia. Germans should they be directly incorporated into the GGE and as such were not invited (Arabia, which was on the other hand much more pro-German, was invited and assumed seats in the Diet). The current Shah of Persia Dalir II was reluctantly supportive of the Germans and their place in the world, as it was under his rule the Global War was ended (his father, Dalir I, had died during the war). He was forced to cede Arabia as well as the Ottoman territories in North Africa and grant independence to Anatolia, but Chancellors Markstein and Kiermaier (among others) saw the creation of Persianalliance as beneficial. Dalir II saw the Germans as a necessary evil, giving them access to Persian oil in exchange for defense against those who would exploit the nation even further, such as Britain had, and in aid for quelling rebellions much like the Arab Revolts in the early twentieth century (those that had caused the Global War).

Anatolia, likewise, was a German ally only reluctantly. President Enver Bardakci was in no way endeared to the Germans but understood the necessity of continuing the alliance should Britain or some other power try to take control of the country. After the Global War, the German government was able to negotiate preferential treatment to the Bosporus Straits into the Black Sea, something deemed of the utmost strategic importance for Germany should there be another Global War.

Italy was the other key German ally, with a string of pro-German leaders, said leader being Francesco Serafini in the 1970s. Despite rejecting membership in the Greater German Empire, Serafini was still unabashedly a friend of Kiermaier, saying that "he [Kiermaier] is always welcome in the land of Rome's children." One of Kiermaier's greatest successes in the year of 1973 was the signing of the agreement that gave Germany access to the Italian naval base at Palermo, ensuring Germany and Italy jointly would be the chief naval powers of the Mediterranean.

Kiermaier also opened beneficial relationships with the countries of North Africa, from west to east: the Sultanate of Morocco, the Republic of Al-Jazair, the Republic of Tripolitania, the Republic of Cyrenaica, and the Republic of Egypt. Founded in the wake of the Global War and unsure of their international allegiances, Germany took a keen interest in them in the 1970s, securing trade and military deals with all of them.

On March 6th, 1974, with the Invasion of India in full swing, the GAP in existence, the Osaka Accords signed, the Greater German Empire hosted delegates from the Ottoman Empire, Italy, the aforementioned North African states, and some other African nations in Berlin to sign a mutual defense pact, named the Berlin Pact. The Berlin Pact would allow for defense against any opposition from either other power bloc. Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Hungary were observers who would consider the offer to join. Nevertheless, the Berlin Pact was set to fundamentally realign international politics.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Occupation of India as of early 1974

By the dawn of the year 1974, the joint CNA-UBE occupation of India was lost in a morass of public opinion and international denouncement. The Indian Liberation Movement's attacks were far from consistent; indeed, they were designed to be chaotic and therefore confound the tradition-minded commanders of the operation, supreme commander Jared Ethan among them.

The occupation's main goal was the location of Shamba Pandya, the man who ran the ILM from a base in an unknown area of the country. A massive "hearts and minds" campaign was conducted with the aid of the Indian government, supporting an end to the ILM's 'unbridled treachery.' These programs were moderately successful; it drove many away from sympathizing with groups that supported withdrawal from the United British Empire (to the chagrin to the Indian Congress for Independence), but had the unintended effect of radicalizing many others. It was one of these events in Jaipur, a city in the middle-west part of the country, that would spark the mass escalation of violence that would mark the coming years.

In Jaipur, a mass public event sponsored by the Indian government marketed towards young adults in particular, cautioning them of a 'country with no employment, no safe place to raise your future children, due to the stinging disease of radicalism and terrorism.' This campaign, devised by the CNA social theorist Miriam Carney, normally working with the University of Burgoyne, treated radicalism similarly to alcohol: something somebody would fall to when times were rough, and would eventually cause a spiral into depravity, violence, and ruining of one's reputation.

Naturally, radical members of the Indian population objected to this. One of these people, Ram Parikh, manifested his objections via ramming his explosives-filled freightmobile into such an event in Jaipur on February 10th, 1974 and detonated the cargo, killing approximately seven hundred. Jaipur, a hotbed of loyalist activity, was not prepared for such radicalism, and the emergency response was lacking. It is estimated up to three hundred more people lost their lives in the injuries sustained due to the bombing.

The bombing in Jaipur led to a mass panic among the CNA and UBE military officials in Pondicherry. General Ethan ordered a massive incursion of military forces into Jaipur to maintain order, as it was feared an ILM action would begin shortly. Ethan was not in any way wrong; indeed, the following actions in the Jaipur area would serve in many ways the death knell of the preconceptions that the CNA and UBE generals had thought about India.

A CNA convoy under Lieutenant Gregory Chapman, a noted tactician in CNA military circles, was dispatched to Jaipur from Karachi with the intent of aiding the local forces. This convoy consisted of several detachments of warmobiles and terramobiles guarding freightmobiles carrying food and supplies to relieve the city of the supply and medical problems associated with such a massive attack. Chapman believed the route he was taking (an Indian-government constructed highway) would be completely safe. He was dead wrong.

Firstly, one of the terramobiles in the front of the convoy spontaneously exploded, causing Chapman to order the convoy to halt. Explosives technicians concluded that there had been an improvised bomb on the side of the road waiting for whatever poor soul that would be unfortunate to cross it. Chapman ordered an immediate search of the upcoming road; Jaipur was within twenty miles of their current location.

Then came the ILM force waiting to ambush them. Out of seemingly nowhere, ILM forces bearing rocket launchers fired near-simultaneously at the terramobiles, destroying several. In a panic, Chapman ordered the convoy to rush towards Jaipur. This sudden movement prevented the explosives technicians from doing their duty: what the ILM did not destroy, more roadside explosives did. To further cause detriment to the situation, several locobombs rammed into terramobiles or convoy freightmobiles, destroying them and killing all those aboard (not to mention destroying the supplies destined for Jaipur). The entirety of Chapman's forces were destroyed. All soldiers and drivers died, Chapman among them.